It’s Sunday night.  My mood darkens with the sun’s inevitable decline.  I can set clocks by it - the accuracy of my Sunday night mood change is on par with that of an atomic clock.  Tomorrow is Monday.  Soon, I’ll be required to return my rental glass slippers to the store at the mall, and my carriage will become a rotting watermelon (I’m still in the South, ya’ll) and fortified by Diet Mountain Dew, a bloodstream full of anti-depressants and mood elevators, I’ll climb into Miss Celie (and do my bidness) and, searching for  fortification from inspirational songs like “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” “Ciao, Baby,” “Tie Your Mother Down,” and “The Pina Colada Song,” I’ll make my drive to work.

Later tonight, I will tie myself into the middle-aged gay lotus position - that’s curled up in my chair with a half-gallon of Blue Bell ice cream - and begin to repeat my positive reinforcement mantra…

…I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. I love my job. I love my job.

At some point, I’ll see something shiny, and before I know it, my mantra will change…

…I’m delusional.  I don’t want to wake up tomorrow.  God, please give me encephalitis.  Or elphantitis.  Or flesh-eating fungus.  Or let a Marta bus run a red-light and knock the shit out me (I promise I’ll wear clean underwear) and send me to the hospital where I can stay in a coma for awhile and when I wake up, Saint Gradon the Bigot will have sued the fuck out of Marta and won a multi-million dollar settlement and I’ll never have to work again and we’ll live happily ever after.  And even if Marta doesn’t settle, at least I’ll have an excuse to get some sleep.

I expect tomorrow to be particularly shitty, and wanted… no, needed, to share this with all of you.

*****

Mister and I made up over the iPod brouhaha last Tuesday and at that time, I told him I was completely exhausted from work, school and life in general and that I had originally scheduled Wednesday off, but considering how busy we are, I had changed the calendar to reflect only Thursday and Friday off.

Mister responded that we’d see how things went, and that if everything went okay, I could finish up a few things and take Wednesday afternoon off, too.

Great.  Cool.  Groovy.

Wednesday morning came, and I was busy finishing up last minute things, swearing to myself and Saint Gradon the Bigot that I wouldn’t answer my crackberry NO MATTER WHAT while I was off.  I completed all of my assigned tasks, then walked into Missus’ office to see if she needed anything before I left.

“Oh, you’re leaving?”

“Mister said I could, if I had everything done,” I replied, “but if you need me to do something, I’ll be happy to take care of it for you.”

She sighed with frustration.  “I haven’t even had a chance to look at the stuff on my desk, so I don’t know, but if there’s anything I can give it to M.”

“Are you sure?  I really don’t mind,” I said, trying to make sure that everyone was happy, or at least as happy as I had the power to make them.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Missus said.

I then checked with our baby attorney, E., to see if he needed anything.  He responded with a grunt and a snort, as “Real Men” are wont to do, and I took that to “No” (”Oh, Stewardess - I speak Neanderthal.”).

Lastly, I went into Mister’s corner lair.  “Okay, Mister, all my work is done,” I reported.

“No.  It’s not,” he curtly explained.  I quickly ran over the “to-do” list sitting on my desk and in my mind could see all the check marks neatly ticked next to each item.  I quietly waited for further explanation.

“Just because you’ve finished whatever’s on your desk, doesn’t ever mean your work is done,” Mister expounded.  He spread his hands over the mounds of dead trees placed in neat, white stacks on his desk.  “What about the such-and-such lease?  I still need to review it and get corrections made to it and get it back out.”

I failed to see how this was “my” work, but wanting to leave, I kept my mouth shut.

“And then there’s the so-and-so stuff that I still need to review and get back out, but I guess C. can make those corrections,” Mister said.

I thought this was a wonderful idea, since this is part of what C. does - she types and she does so very well.

“And then what about this-and-that?  We have to have those out by Friday,” Mister told me.

“Mister,” I said, trying to be patient, “I was already scheduled off tomorrow and Friday, so I’m not sure what you wanted me to do about this-and-that.”

“I don’t want you to think that just because you’re leaving that your work is done.”  Mister’s face was really red.

I searched my central cortex for a proper response and finally found one.

“Okay.”

“And every time you, Missus or E. leaves early or is on vacation, it invariably falls to me to pick up your shit and deal with it.  As soon as you leave, there will be some emergency you won’t be here to deal with, and I’ll have to stop doing my work to deal with it.

“And every time you leave early, Missus and E. give me shit about it.  Are you absolutely sure they don’t need anything?”

“I asked them, but I’ll ask them again,” I said, trying to do everything I could to placate him.

“Because Missus gets really upset about it and always comes in here and asks me why I let you leave when we’re all so busy.  And we are all busy.  I’m stressed out, Missus is stressed out and E.’s stressed out, so there’s no reason for you not to be working at full capacity.”

“Mister,” I said, “I’m billing eight to nine hours a day.  It’s May 14th, and I’ve billed just under 80 hours for the month.”

“You have?  Good.  Because we’re all stressed out, and there’s plenty of work to do, and I don’t want you to think that just because you’ve finished what’s on your desk that all the work is done.”

I wracked my brain, trying to figure out what the fuck he was trying to say and what he was obviously getting so pissed off about.  I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything wrong.  I hadn’t snuck in with a radio, CD player or any other sort of contraband, and I hadn’t done anything like cry or be sensitive, so I was at a loss.

“Do you want me to cancel my time off, Mister?” I asked.

“No, I just want you to make sure that Missus and E. are taken care of before you leave and that you don’t think all the work is done just because you’re leaving.”

“Oh.  Okay.  I will, and I, uh, don’t.”

I left Mister’s corner lair, completely fucking perplexed.  What the fuck just happened?  Didn’t he offer me the afternoon off?  Is there some sort of hole in the time-space continuum in this fucking office that I keep stepping through where in one dimension, sanity reigns and in the other, I should fear the Jabberwocky?  Did Marlboro start putting peyote in its light cigarettes?  Is this some existential bullshit like “Lost?”  Am I dead and this is hell?  If so, where’s my fucking tropical island, and why do I have to be stuck with these nutballs?

I walked back into Missus’ office to make doubly-sure that she didn’t need me to do anything for her.  “Missus, I have a lunch appointment with an estate attorney, but I’ll be more than happy to come back after that and work the rest of the day, if you’d like me to.  I’m more than happy to do whatever you’d like for me to do.”

She assured me that I was not needed, so I left to meet my estate attorney.

Later that afternoon, as I sat in my living room enjoying a margarita and flipping through the latest issue of BusinessWeek (I’m a nerd - get over it), I got an urgent e-mail on my crackberry.  Mister couldn’t find a particular document on the network, he told me in ALL CAPS, and needed it immediately.

He neglected to tell me which particuarly document he needed, so I sent him three - all of the ones possibly applicable to the situation at hand, with a note to call me if he needed anything else, because it’s the fastest way to reach me.

My phone rang, and it was Mister.  “This isn’t what I wanted.  I want the recorded plat.”

“I’m not sure which recorded plat you want, Mister, so I went you all of them.  But you’ll note that two of them are identical, just filed in different counties,” I explained.

“No, these aren’t what I want.  I want the recorded plat.”

“Those are all of the plats on the title commitment,” I explained, meaning there simply were no other plats.  Period.

“Look,” he says, royally fucking pissed off at me now.  “I’m not going to do this.  I told you what I wanted, and you obviously can’t send it… oh, here it is.  Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.  Let me know if you need anything else.”

God, just a little Marta bus.  Please?

*****

Bob Geldof became famous for three reasons:  1) his performance as Pink Floyd in “The Wall;” 2) his humanitarian efforts; and 3) his membership in a band that only ever had one real hit - The Boomtown Rats.

Their one hit was called, “I Don’t Like Mondays” and every fucking 80’s station in America and on satellite radio plays it every fucking Monday.  Every.  But that doesn’t make it a bad song.  It’s really a horribly sad song, about a school shooting way, way, way before Columbine.  The following is from songfacts.com…

This is about Brenda Spencer, a 16-year-old San Diego high school student who lived across from an elementary school. On Monday, January 29, 1979, she opened fire on the school with a rifle, killing 2 adults (including the principal) and injuring 9 kids before going back to her home. Police surrounded her home and waited for 7 hours until she gave herself up. In that time, she spoke with a reporter on the phone. When asked why she did it, she replied, “I just started shooting, that’s it. I just did it for the fun of it. I just don’t like Mondays. I just did it because it’s a way to cheer the day up. Nobody likes Mondays.”

Although I will always love this song for its musicality, I must admit I adored this song far more when I didn’t know the back story.

Tomorrow, when I’m sure to hear the song, I’m not going to think of Brenda Spencer’s crazy ass.  I’m gonna think of Pink Floyd, and maybe I’ll shave off my eye brows and nipples, and then maybe Queen Elizabeth will beknight me, and then I can just be Dame Maxine LeGay and get a gig acting like the rest of the Dames do or just go to fancy cocktail parties or do whatever other dames do with their days and any case not worry about any of this shit any more.

It’s not like I’m using my nipples for anything, anyway.